Ella Fitzgerald Song Quotes

People like Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Marlene Dietrich and Sammy Davis Jr. all walked me down this path of entertainment. ~ Dionne Warwick

The fabulous places I've been, wonderful things that've happened, great people I've met ought to make a story. ~ Ella Fitzgerald

Lighthearted boys and girls
were harvesting the grapes in woven baskets,
while on a resonant harp a boy among them
played a tune of longing, singing low
with delicate voice a summer dirge. The others,
breaking out in song for the joy of it,
kept time together as they skipped along. ~ Homer

I don't want to say the wrong thing, which I always do. I think I do better when I sing. ~ Ella Fitzgerald

We go in and sit on the sofa by the fire to dry out, and she plays her favourite records, lots of Rickie Lee Jones and Led Zeppelin and Donovan and Bob Dylan - even though she was sixteen in 1982, there's definitely something very 1971 about Alice. I watch as she jumps around the room to 'Crosstown Traffic' by Jimi Hendrix, then when she's out of breath and tired of changing records every three minutes she puts a crackly old Ella Fitzgerald LP on, and we lie on the sofa and read our books, and steal glances at each other every now and then, like that bit between Michael York and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, and talk only when we feel like it. ~ David Nicholls

The only thing better than singing is more singing. ~ Ella Fitzgerald

I didn't really grow up on hip-hop. Ella Fitzgerald and the old school jazz divas are more my comfort zone. ~ Gugu Mbatha-Raw

You take romance - I'll take Jell-O. ~ Ella Fitzgerald

I also met, early on Ella Fitzgerald. Her songbooks are some of the most amazing bodies of work. ~ Johnny Mathis

I know I'm no glamour girl, and it's not easy for me to get up in front of a crowd of people. It used to bother me a lot, but now I've got it figured out that God gave me this talent to use, so I just stand there and sing. ~ Ella Fitzgerald

I have been rich, and I have been poor. Believe me baby, rich is better! ~ Ella Fitzgerald

When we were at the Apollo, Holiday was a block away. I asked her for her autograph. ~ Ella Fitzgerald

I used to be very self-conscious. I used to wish I was pretty. My cousin Georgia always taught me that if you smile, people will like you. Sometimes people will say something you don't like, and you get angry a bit, but you just smile. You let it go by, even if you really would like to choke 'em. By smiling, I think I've made more friends than if I was the other way. ~ Ella Fitzgerald

I would love to sing with Ella Fitzgerald. ~ Crystal Waters

Nobody else even approaches the trumpet like [Sweets Edison] does: Never too much and always plenty. He's the greatest trumpet player to play along with singers. He exactly knows how to play with you, how to answer you about what you just sang ... On top of that, he has some great sense of humor, both as a musician and as a man. Every time I see him, I'm laughing so much. Sweets is impeccable and incomparable. ~ Ella Fitzgerald

I look at the careers of people I'm standing on the shoulders of. People like Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., and Sarah Vaughan. These are icons I wanted to emulate, and I feel like they've been holding me up for quite a long time. ~ Dionne Warwick

I guess what everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved. And to know that you loved me for my singing is too much for me. Forgive me if I don't have all the words. Maybe I can sing it and you'll understand. ~ Ella Fitzgerald

I respected Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. Those were my heroes, and they were 10 years older than I was. ~ Tony Bennett

My style of singing has always been referred to 'soul' singing when it fact it's more influenced by English R&B Blues Shouting. I'm closer to Led Zeppelin as a vocalist than to Ella Fitzgerald. It was torture dealing with major labels. ~ Alison Moyet

A feeling of slow motion came upon me then, and parts of my bike scratched against bits of my body. Slimy seaweed tangled around my ankles and my shoes slipped off my feet. My arms and legs were dragged in different directions as if there was an underwater force making me dance to a morbid tune.

I felt light. I felt slow. I felt fast - all in quick succession, but I couldn't think of anything except the quite relaxing idea that soon everything was going to be over.

I was alone. All around the wet rocks were silent and slimy. I couldn't feel any pleasure or any purpose. My decision seemed to make a terrible kind of sense My panic had gone. I was finished making decisions. I didn't think I'd ever have any more to make.

I'm not exactly sure what I'd been hoping for next. Brightness and song possibly. Beautiful music perhaps, say a harp or something playing in the distance and warmth to soothe my numb, frozen, sopping, scraped body. I definitely wasn't expecting what happened next. ~ Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

Did I do all right? ~ Ella Fitzgerald

I was raised in a mostly white neighborhood. I was this little white girl jamming out to Ella Fitzgerald and Bobby Brown. ~ Jojo

Her voice is full of money, ...
That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money- that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it ... High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl ... ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Meghan and I talked about music - she loved Ella Fitzgerald. "What about all the hip acts that college kids love? Do you like any of them?"
"Like who?"
"I don't know all their names. Snoop Diggity Do and all those hip cats." Meghan shook her head and laughed. We talked about movies - she loved anything made before 1964. No wonder I thought she was older; she was an old soul in a young body.
"So what's your favorite movie?" I asked.
"To Kill a Mockingbird." My mother would have liked Meghan. She made my father and me watch To Kill a Mockingbird with her when I was in first grade. It must have been the twentieth time she'd seen it, but she still cried at the parts that made her weepy-eyed the first nineteen times. ~ Donna VanLiere

Listen to her voice, don't look at her. ~ Ella Fitzgerald

Everybody wants to know about my style and how it came about. It's no big secret. It's the way I feel. ~ Ella Fitzgerald

Coming through the years, and finding that I not only have just the fans of my day, but the young ones of today - that's what it means, it means it was worth all of it. ~ Ella Fitzgerald

One of my biggest musical influences is definitely Ella Fitzgerald as a vocalist. ~ Elle Varner

The great tapestries of trees had darkened to ghosts back at the last edge of twilight. The early moon had drenched the arches with pale blue, and, weaving over the night, in and out of the gossamer rifts of moon, swept a song, a song with more than a hint of sadness, infinitely transient, infinitely regretful. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

It really was a whole generation who were listening to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, James Moody, Fats Navarro and, a little bit later on, Mongo Santamaría and Chuck Berry, and these dozen or so guys gave them a voice. They led the way. They wrote what a whole generation wanted to read. The time was right and they seized the day by writing about their lives. They travelled, they got into scrapes, they got arrested, they got wasted … and they wrote about it.

Isn't that something? ~ Karl Wiggins

After my early days of being a passionate young Elvis fan, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. I got interested in Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald. Then I got turned on to the blues. I realized how important it was to our music in England at the time. Everyone was into the blues. Then you start looking at the different kinds of blues, and you follow the journey backwards from Chicago to earlier times back down to the Delta to the Memphis Blues. ~ Ian Gillan

I've always sung. I was really into musical theater when I was growing up. As a kid, I listened to Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone, actually, on cassette tapes. ~ Gugu Mbatha-Raw

I came from a family where my people didn't like rhythm and blues. Bing Crosby - "Pennies from Heaven" - Ella Fitzgerald, was all I heard. ~ Little Richard

Give Me The Simple Life"

I don't believe in frettin' and grievin'
Why mess around with strife'
I never was cut out to step and strut out
Give me the simple life

Some find it pleasant dining on pheasant
Those things roll off my knife
Just serve me tomatoes and mashed potatoes
Give me the simple life

A cottage small if all I'm after
Not one that's spacious and wide
A house that rings with joy and laughter
And the ones you love inside

Some like the high road, I like the low road
Free from the care and strife
Sounds corny and seedy, but yes, indeed
Give me the simple life ~ Ella Fitzgerald

I don't know how much more what I've done is any more important than what Ella Fitzgerald did. Ella crossed those lines, as did George Benson before me. There've been lots of people who brought a pop audience to jazz because they were able to link the two and give people easy access to the world of jazz. ~ Al Jarreau

In April war was declared with Germany. Wilson and his cabinet - a cabinet that in its lack of distinction was strangely reminiscent of the twelve apostles - let loose the carefully starved dogs of war, and the press began to whoop hysterically against the sinister morals, sinister philosophy, and sinister music produced by the Teutonic temperament. Those who fancied themselves particularly broad-minded made the exquisite distinction that it was only the German Government which aroused them to hysteria; the rest were worked up to a condition of retching indecency. Any song which contained the word "mother" and the word "kaiser" was assured of a tremendous success. At last every one had something to talk about - and almost every one fully enjoyed it, as though they had been cast for parts in a sombre and romantic play. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

The one radio voice that I listened to above others belonged to Ella Fitzgerald. There was a quality to her voice that fascinated me, and I'd sing along with her, trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, the casual yet clean way she sang the words. ~ Doris Day